“You will see that better by-and-by,” returned the monk. “Hitherto I have only spoken of piety in general, but, just to show you more in detail how our fathers have disencumbered it of its toils and troubles, would it not be most consoling to the ambitious to learn that they may maintain genuine devotion along with an inordinate love of greatness?”
“What, father! even though they should run to the utmost excess of ambition?”
“Yes,” he replied; “for this would be only a venial sin, unless they sought after greatness in order to offend God and injure the State more effectually. Now venial sins do not preclude a man from being devout, as the greatest saints are not exempt from them.[[191]] ‘Ambition,’ says Escobar, ‘which consists in an inordinate appetite for place and power, is of itself a venial sin; but when such dignities are coveted for the purpose of hurting the commonwealth, or having more opportunity to offend God, these adventitious circumstances render it mortal.’”
“Very savory doctrine, indeed, father.”
“And is it not still more savory,” continued the monk, “for misers to be told, by the same authority, ‘that the rich are not guilty of mortal sin by refusing to give alms out of their superfluity to the poor in the hour of their greatest need?—scio in gravi pauperum necessitate divites non dando superflua, non peccare mortaliter.’”
“Why truly,” said I, “if that be the case, I give up all pretension to skill in the science of sins.”
“To make you still more sensible of this,” returned he, “you have been accustomed to think, I suppose, that a good opinion of one’s self, and a complacency in one’s own works, is a most dangerous sin? Now, will you not be surprised if I can show you that such a good opinion, even though there should be no foundation for it, is so far from being a sin, that it is, on the contrary, the gift of God?”
“Is it possible, father?”
“That it is,” said the monk; “and our good Father Garasse[[192]] shows it in his French work, entitled Summary of the Capital Truths of Religion: ‘It is a result of commutative justice that all honest labor should find its recompense either in praise or in self-satisfaction. When men of good talents publish some excellent work, they are justly remunerated by public applause. But when a man of weak parts has wrought hard at some worthless production, and fails to obtain the praise of the public, in order that his labor may not go without its reward, God imparts to him a personal satisfaction, which it would be worse than barbarous injustice to envy him. It is thus that God, who is infinitely just, has given even to frogs a certain complacency in their own croaking.’”
“Very fine decisions in favor of vanity, ambition, and avarice!” cried I; “and envy, father, will it be more difficult to find an excuse for it?”